Day 3 of a very long series

I had to add another picture of the playground and my Dad playing with the kids.

Now, this is the third post and I am only on the first full day there. Oh, my, doing this three pictures at a time will take a long time. (That is just my life right now though)

After the playground, my Dad headed home to check on Pap(what we call my Grandfather) and Gramma and the kids and I headed up to Virginia to go to a store up there. The store was closed but we found a festival to attend at a place called Karlan Mansion. It is no mansion according to today's standards but way back yonder, it was huge!

Here are my blessings in front of a small fall scene. I love fall and getting to see all the fall decorations was just wonderful to me.

Here is the front of the mansion with a bluegrass group performing. Tomorrow I will share a couple more pictures of the Wilderness Festival.

Have a great day!

May the Lord find us faithful.

art 2

This is not a overly exciting week but we had fun doing what we did.

Once I woke up blessing #2 and got her fed and bathed, we headed over to see my Grandfather and my 3 year old niece was waiting so patiently for her cousins to come. The cousins had never met, as I said, it had been 4 years since we been to the lower 48. I was thrilled to meet my niece for the first time. Here she is, a sweet mess!! I miss her so much.

We loaded up the grandparents and grandkids and headed to a local playground to play and have a picnic lunch.

 

We had sandwiches and what I loved, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, we can't get those here in Alaska.

Here is my Dad on the top of the what ever this climbing thingie is called. My girl blessings are climbing up to try to get to him.

I am limiting myself to three pictures a day, it may take me a while to get through the week but I am trying to use my time wisely this week. I am teaching every morning which we are adjusting to, tomorrow we are starting Missions Conference at church and we will have evening services Wed.-Fri. Life is busy for the next two and a half weeks.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Trip in pictures

Well, I have finally downloaded my pictures and I am attempting to post the beginning of our trip.

We got the call on Tuesday of my Grandfather's heart attack. Wednesday night it was decided we would go so we ordered the tickets and I spent Thursday crying and packing. I wanted to go but I didn't want to go. I am very glad we went, it had been four years since we had been to the lower 48, way too long.  My wonderful husband came home from work a couple of hours early and got our son's four wheeler tires on so he could ride it before he left town. (He had just bought it the week before and they had been working on it the weekend before.)

 

 

 

Thursday night we headed to the airport, our flight was leaving at 1:40am. We were tired and sad to be leaving Daddy, but it was only for a week.

 

Nana and Poppa came to pick us up from the airport and we spent the night at their house. The next morning, blessing #3, who slept the most on the airplane was the first one awake. She made herself some eggs for breakfast. The other blessings did not wake up until 10:00am and I finally had to wake up blessing#2 at 11:30am! She is my sleeper.

Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I will be able to post the rest.

May the Lord find us faithful.

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Now, I am home and I am reading blogs but I am just not able to do much more. I have not even downloaded the pictures from my camera to the computer yet, very unlike me. I have overcome the jet lag and now I am in recovery mode. My house still needs a little recovery and I plan on working this evening and tomorrow on regaining the house!

And....

Enjoy you weekend.

May the Lord find us faithful.

We are home!!!!

We made it home safely last night or I mean this morning. I am thoroughly exhausted. My sweetheart headed out to church this morning and left us all here to regain composure! Blessing#1 is in the shower and the girl blessings are enjoying playing at home. Blessing #3 has been playing around on the piano and that sounds so good to my ears. My sweetheart has a fire going in the woodstove and I am getting ready to go browse through catalogs in front of the nice warm family room. Then once everyone else gets a bath, I will take a long soak in the tub. Then the unpacking will commence.

I have about a gazillion things to do, unpack, download pictures from camera (about 400), get ready to work tomorrow ( I start a four week kindergarten substituting job at our churches Christian School while the kindergarten teacher is out of town, it is only half days and at this point I am glad it is!), and much, much more.

Enjoy your day with family.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

The last day

Today is our last full day here. It is always bittersweet, we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to come to the lower 48, but we are very ready to go home. This short visit makes me all the more looking forward to a longer visit next year here.

Tomorrow we will head over to do a little shopping before going to the airport. I am so looking forward to the flight being over!! But, the flight schedule going back is better than the flight coming here.

Tonight we will go a local high school football game at the high school my sweetheart and I attended and my sweetheart played football here. Blessing #1 is looking forward to watching the game for the school his Dad played for.

I look forward to getting to catch up with what everyone has been up to while I have been away.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Another post from Kentucky

Good morning to you all.

We are doing well. My Grandfatther has good moments and bad moments, but he is up and moving about a little each day. He is at the DR. this morning so we will know how he is doing after that visit. My sister is doing her clinicals at the same DR (she is going to be a nurse practitioner in Dec.) I am so thankful that both my Dad and my sister are in the medical field and my Grandfather has such care at their home here. We are going to look at a house today. They are looking for a home with a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. They do not really want to move but at this time it may be the best thing to do as my Grandfather has a rough time going up and down the steps here.

We are enjoying some warm weather and visiting with all the grandparents when we can.  Thank you for praying.

May the Lord find us faithful.

I'm here

Greetings from Kentucky! We made it into Kentucky late last night, safe and sound. Thanks so much to my friend Lynn for updating for me. I just could not sit down at the computer before I left. I really had a lot of anxiety anticipating the trip (flying) and then coming into a crisis situation. I have yet to see my Grandfather. Other grandparents picked us up last night and it was around 11pm when me made it into town, so we spent the night with these grandparents. I still have one blessing sleeping but the others have rousted slowly this morning. I am waiting for the last blessing to get up before I make it over. My poor niece is waiting for her cousins to come play with her.

We are only here for a short visit. I want to come see all my lower 48 blog friends. Maybe next year.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Update on Melissa

This is Lynn. Melissa's friend here in North Pole AK. She asked me to update you on what's going on.

Her Grandfather has 5 blocked arteries. Surgery is not an option for him. He has asked to go home because he  doesn't want to die in the hospital. So he was discharged. He is at Melissa's dad's house. The DR. said he could pass away or maybe not. I told Melissa he may surprise us all and make a full recovery. He has "spells" that cause him to  sweat badly, but he is in no pain. The family has planned a week's vacation.  He told them he wants to go with them. So they all will go away for the week.

Melissa will be going down to be with her Dad. He called and asked if she would come home. So she and the blessings will leave early in the morning. She will try to update all of us when she gets a chance.

Please be in prayer for a few things.
    Safety in flight
    Peace for Melissa's dad(He's a very gentle and kind man.) and the rest of the family.
    If the Lord should take her Grandfather, pray that it be as easy on everyone as it could be.

Lynn for Melissa
   
May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School #6

 

Here is my precious past post. I think this picture was taken at my grandparent's house. On the left is my mom and the right is my aunt.  This is a fitting picture for my memories as we all gathered at my grandparent's house on a regular basis.

Scripture this week.

Philippians 4:13

"I can do all things through Christ who strenghtenth me."

May the Lord find us faithful.

Update number two

I just got a call from my Dad and my Grandfather has made major improvements. Thank you all for your prayers. Earlier in the day it was not looking good at all. At this point my Grandfather is talking and laughing. Tomorrow he has a heart cath. scheduled so for now please keep praying and I will keep updating as time goes on.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Please pray

Update: It was a heart attack. I just spoke with my dad and he is on his way over to check on things.

Original Post:

I received a call from my sister this afternoon that my Grandfather is in the hospital and in need of being transferred to a larger hospital. The weather there was not agreeable to go by medivac so he has had to be transferred via ambulance. I am unsure of the actual medical emergency going on with him. Please pray for my family as they are there taking care of things. My sisters are following and my Dad chose not to ride in the ambulance but will be driving over as well. This is his last living parent so please pray for my Dad, he does not do stressful situations well.  Lastly, if I have one thing that is negative about living in Alaska, it is times like these, when it is so long to get back to family when these crisis situations occur. Also, please pray that we would know when I should go and if I should take the blessings or just go on my own.

May the Lord find us faithful.

An arctic entry way --edited portion in italics

I have looked online for a picture of an arctic entry way and came up empty all the way around. So, in my own not so great words I will do my best to explain. The purpose of an arctic entry way is to keep cold air out of the house and to keep the warm air in the house. It is kind of like an enclosed porch but then not really. It is nothing like a breezeway. It is actually a room, small as it may be, with the intended purpose of keeping the cold out of your heated living space. Very handy when it is -40 degrees. Kind of like an entrance to some stores. Forgive me for not remembering how stores in the lower 48 are, I have not been out of Alaska in over 4 years. Most stores here do not just open to the outside, you actually go through two sets of doors to enter. Usually the carts are stored there.  Usually an arctic entry has no windows only a door and you go in and shut that door then open the entry to the house. Make sense? I hope so. We do not have an arctic entry, but in the winter we mainly enter our home through the garage.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it sonw!!

I wanted to have my winter snow template ready by the time it snowed but with prioritizing, that did not happen. But, my sweetheart did prioritize to get this roof built .....

 

before this came this morning. My sweetheart is at a men's retreat about 90 miles south and he said it is really snowing there.  The roof thingie my sweetheart built will protect the door on that side of the house. It is the side that gets baked in the summer and wind and snow in the winter. It will eventually become an arctic entry way.

This is our Emmy, she is a chocolate labrador retriever. She was surveying the area to make sure I was safe.

We are having a 15 minute day. What does that mean? 15 minutes of group cleaning and 15 minutes of break(me)/play(the blessings). We accomplished much the first 15 minutes and are enjoying our 15 minute break. I think within an hour we will have accomplished much of what I want accomplished!

Gotta go timer is beeping.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Nature Journals

I have so much to share but I will wait and maybe do a week in review post tomorrow night. Today, nature journals. There is so much about a Charlotte Mason education that I love and yet so much that seems so difficult in actually "doing". Slowly though I am getting it. Like dictation, I do not understand why these things alude me... they are simple and straight forward but I still need to have the "ah-ha" moment. Nature journaling has also been a challenge for me. We use Character Sketches for Bible; it includes an animal study with each chapter. (Someone has loaned these to us until we have completed them) Duh, how easy to do in the winter when most of our nature is white. What a natural thing to do. So, today we broke out the nature journals. I have had them in the past do an animal report fill out page but how dull and then I feel we have not completed it if we do not fill out every space. This is much nicer. Every day we will add sentences and/or more drawings until the chapter is completed.

Here are our pages for today: We studied the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, this was nice for us as we do not have the ruby-throated hummingbird in our area. We can learn about it and journal about this bird. Have you seen a ruby-throated hummingbird at your house? They live in the eastern 2/3 of the United States and they migrate from southern Canada all the way to Central America and they only weigh about as much as a copper penny.

Mom's

Blessing #2

 

Blessing#1

And blessing #3

May the Lord find us faithful.

Taking care of a couple of matters of business and a recipe, thanks for stopping by

 

First off, Jenn and Mama Karen have graciously given me the Blogging Star Award. I am very humbled to receive such an award. I am just a Mom who enjoys this venue of being connected with other homeschoolers.  There are so many great blogs out there and so many that I glean information from. When I think of a blogging star it is someone who posts with a purpose, some one whose personality really comes out through their blogs. Jenn and Karen are those kinds of bloggers. I am not passing this award on at this time as most of the people I would pass it along to have already received the award.

I know there was another matter of business that I was meaning to post about but it has gone away from me at this time. So, on to the recipe....

I changed our breakfast from an all out country breakfast to:

Hash Potato Pie

5 large eggs

1/2 cup milk

3 cups hasbrowns (country style)

1/3 cup green onions

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. hot pepper sauce

1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese (divided, 1 cup in, 1/2 cup on top)

4 slices cooked bacon

350 degree oven

Beat eggs and milk, add potatoes, green onions, pepper sauce and 1 cup of cheese and 1/2 of bacon.

Pour into greased pie pan.

Bake for 30 minutes.

This is a great recipe, I have used it for years, especially for brunches. We are still having biscuits and gravy as they are my sweethearts favorite and I have not made them in a while. And we are still having cooked apples.

We are eating alot of cheese for some reason this week, who knows why, just bad planning on my part I guess. Maybe I am in the cheese mood! I need to put cheese on the grocery list!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School #5

I Corinthians 15:2-4

By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures;

May the Lord find us faithful.

Monday Meanderings

I wonder how many weeks until this becomes second nature for me. I never can remember the catagories past Bible Study!!

1. Bible Study/Devotions -Daily Bible reading and prayer in the mornings. Bible Study Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.


2. Must do- Get cleaning routines reestablished, find a furniture arrangement that works in the family room, buy fabric to make girl blessings their dresses


3. Zone I am in the dining room this week, declutter first and then work on zone cleaning list


4. Train them up- Memorizing Mark 12:30-31, working on being kind to our neighbor(ie, our siblings) this is a big issue for us right now too, Jenn. Also, still working through Character Sketches


5. Menu Planning-

   Monday- Crock Pot BBQ chicken wings, crockpot au gratin potatoes (yes, I have two crockpots)

  Tuesday-  Super Nachos 

  Wednesday- Breakfast  BAcon, Eggs, Biscuits and Gravy, hashbrowns and cooked apples

  Thursday - Moose Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and maple cookies

  Friday- Pizza, fresh veggies

  Saturday- Burgers, Baked Fries

  Sunday- Salmon, Mac and Cheese, Salad, Rolls, Pumpkin cake

 

May the Lord find us faithful.